PovertyCure Wins 2012 Templeton Freedom Award

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PovertyCure, an educational initiative of the Acton Institute, has won a 2012 Templeton Freedom Award for its contributions to the understanding of freedom in the category of “Free Market Solutions to Poverty.” From the website:

Acton Institute, United States
The US based Acton Institute has won a 2012 Templeton Freedom Award for their PovertyCure educational initiative. PovertyCure advocates moral free enterprise as the key to authentic and permanent poverty elimination. PovertyCure has already had a tangible impact on the poverty debate through high-impact partnerships, resources, and conferences even though the project was only officially launched last fall, relying on the efforts of an extensive coalition to market and publicize the effort.

A visit to the website reveals a growing list of 160 national and international partner organizations from over 50 countries. These partners represent academia (University of Notre Dame, University of Cambridge), entrepreneurial groups (SEVEN Fund, MicroRate), and religious ministries (Goshen International, Partners Worldwide). The ‘Voices’ section of the PovertyCure website features over 30 well-known experts, as well as those who have overcome poverty including Peruvian economist Hernando de Soto, Cambridge University scholar Peter Heslam, and Oxford University professor Paul Collier. Over 30,000 web users have watched these short, impactful videos to date.

A major element of the campaign was Poverty, Entrepreneurship, and Integral Development, a seven-part conference series taking place throughout Africa, Europe, and Latin America. In total, conference lecturers fielded some 300 television and radio interviews with media outlets around the world, while the conferences themselves received coverage on television, radio, and Internet sources reaching more than 50 million individuals. This figure includes such popular outlets as The Guardian, The Economist, and Financial Times. Additionally, social media is one of the initiative’s most effective vehicles. PovertyCure’s Facebook page, which had 2,300 likes this time last year, boasts 368,000 today, representing a substantial number of people around the world who interact with and share our content. A documentary is currently in the works and will be broadcasted by PBS.